


What Fever Dreams May Come

by TheWasAndShouldBeKing



Series: Another Name for Fear [1]
Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Gen, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-30
Updated: 2015-11-30
Packaged: 2018-05-04 03:19:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5318477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWasAndShouldBeKing/pseuds/TheWasAndShouldBeKing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the early days of the Boogeyman's fall and the Guardians' ascension Pitch and Sandy call a temporary cease-of-hostilities over a little girl's sickbed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Fever Dreams May Come

**Author's Note:**

> This short fic stands alone, but is also part of the continuity for a larger piece I'm presently working on. The 'verse blends some elements of the "Guardians of Childhood" chapter book backgrounds into the film characters, while still keeping everyone (except the Man in the Moon) terrestrial. It's not an event-for-event importation though, so some elements (like Sandy already knowing Pitch's history) no longer apply. 
> 
> Feedback is love! I hope you enjoy. ♥

 

Pitch had been haunting the Sumner girl for months. She was low hanging fruit, really, an only child in a gigantic, old manor house that creaked and groaned as the ancient timbers settled and the wind moaned down drafty chimneys. The nursery was really too big for only her, and it was a simple trick to steal from shadow to shadow, to be just barely glimpsed, out of the corner of a darting eye.

He stood in the void beneath the darkness of her bed now though, and felt almost nothing of her customary terror. Pitch had become used to a simple, straightforward fear from her: the simmering dread of the unknown, flaring at moments with instincts of survival. It wasn't novel, but it was consistent, and she knew him by name. He always liked that. 

Sometimes she'd try to bargain with his silence, promising not to talk back to her nursemaid, or to pay better attention to her lessons. As though he minded about any of that. But someone had told her the _Boogeyman_ came to get naughty little girls, and far be it from Pitch not to live up to expectation.

Tonight, however, her fears seemed a veritable tempest. The dread of mortality felt deeper, colder, everything confused, and feverish. Pitch no longer frightened her most in all the world. There was some new, very _real_ threat drowning out all else in her mind, and while usually he knew the true nature of these things almost as clear as words, tonight his powers failed him.

Pitch melted away from the void, that nowhere space between his own Lair and children's bedrooms, and reformed in the shadow thrown by the high poster and curtains of her canopy bed. Gazing down through the darkness, he knew immediately what had caused her fears' metamorphosis. 

The Sumner girl was sick, and not just some little cold or flu that any child is wont to suffer. Her pale hair clung to her neck and forehead, damp with sweat, and the shut-in pallor of her skin was blotched everywhere with vivid scarlet. Pitch could barely hear her breath, but when he leaned down he caught it, the wetness in her chest. 

In a moment of daring, he reached out and touched the tips of his fingers to her forehead. She didn't even stir, and it felt _boiling_. If he'd kept this appointment even a few hours earlier, Pitch may have been able to clearly read her terror of this illness, but the fever had already begun to take a deadly toll. 

Pitch stood straight again and glanced about the room, its darkness no hindrance to him. He knew already she was alone, but he still looked, still _expected_ to see someone, sitting up fretfully in the rocking chair, or on the window seat, or even leaned against a wall, too anxious to sit. Of course, they were alone. Neatly stitched dolls and stuffed bears were this child's only company.

And him. Pitch Black. The Boogeyman.

He stood straight, seething quietly. They hadn't even left a lamp lit for her, not even this once, because they thought she was too old to be afraid of the dark.

"Get in here, you traitorous wretch," Pitch snarled as he pulled the window dressings aside, flinching just a little at the brightness of the Moon. Its watery beams splashed across the floor and touched the edges of the bed. They failed to fall across the dying girl, but their glow still brightened the whole of the room a little more. Chagrined at his own mawkishness, Pitch could only hope that it helped.

He turned back to the bed and lowered himself to sit upon the edge, leaning back against a headboard post so that his own shadow remained at bay. There was nothing left here of use to Pitch, but he lingered anyway, watching the girl, hands folded in his lap. He didn't even let her fear touch him any longer. It wasn't for him, and he couldn't do anything to take it away.

"You should have been as naughty as you pleased," Pitch sighed, privately chastising himself for his own uselessness. He had no power over illness. There was no terror he could inspire that would keep children well.

The sound of the window latch pulled Pitch from his mournful reverie. He turned his head to see the little Sandman standing upon the sill, looking doubtful and suspicious of the scene, coiled whip in hand. Pitch suppressed an urge to bear his teeth toward him and the pooling moonbeams. He wasn't interested in making this particular nursery a battleground. There could be no victor, here.

Instead Pitch merely gestured a solicitous hand toward the girl, though he made no move to stand and retreat.

Sandy tilted his head quizzically, floating forward with a well-earned cautiousness. They'd traded some quite vicious blows in recent memory. If the pair of them had not been preternatural immortals, they'd both still have the wounds to show for it.

The Sandman's wide, expressive features fell entirely however, when he looked upon the child. The whip vanished. He rested his little hands on the edge of the covers and looked up, baring his sorrow openly to Pitch. For his part the Boogeyman merely sighed, not willing to be so genuine, but without the heart to call on false malice this time.

A symbol in Sand appeared above the Sandman's head, a serpent twined about a staff, the Rod of Asclepius, accompanied by a faintly hopeful expression. Pitch huffed at the feint to optimism and shook his head. "It's too late, little man. Even her fear is too disordered to be called conscious. I don't think she'll last the night."

Sandy looked crushed again. He glanced back toward the window briefly, then seemed to make up his mind about something. He boosted himself onto the edge of the bed, sitting nearer the girl's feet, with Pitch still at her head. With a twist of his little palms, he conjured up ethereal whisps of that glowing Dream Sand.

This always fascinated Pitch. It was a strange, mysterious power, which he'd rarely yet had the opportunity to see put to its true use. Sandy usually ousted the Boogeyman with judicious application of his whips, whenever they crossed paths. It was becoming incredibly _annoying_ , how protective Sandy was of the dreaming.

They seemed content to allow one another for now though, gentle streams of shining gold floating forward, and coming only incidentally close to Pitch. They coalesced above the feverish child, swirling about and in on each other, as though trying to form some shape, but never truly able to settle. After a few moments the Sand became an amorphous mist and gently falling pieces of glittering light. 

Pitch opened himself up again, and this time felt no fear.

It should have felt like a moment of defeat, and some irritating part of Pitch's mind tried to talk him into the appropriate anger and disappointment. He ignored it. He drew that part back, quieting it for the first time in a very long time, and brought a hand out from his lap.

It was an unhurried movement, and even that looked to put the Sandman on edge, but the tenuous cease-fire remained unbroken. Pitch kept his hand clear of the Sand entirely, but stroked his fingertips through the girl's damp hair, no longer afraid he'd make anything worse by it. Gods, but she was _scalding_.

The twinkling light of the Sand brightened, though still no clear forms appeared. Sandy looked up at him in bewildered askance, as though unable to believe his eyes. Pitch did not feel like explaining himself to the diminutive Guardian. When the question mark materialised above Sandy, Pitch shook his own head. 

"Ask the Rabbit, if you want to know." Though Pitch doubted, between the Sandman's symbol language and Bunnymund's own reluctance, that story would ever be retold.

It wasn't too very long before the Sand began to dim again, fading further and further, even as the Moon set and the shadows in the nursery deepened. Pitch ran the pad of his thumb over her heated brow until the last sparkle flickered out, and her tiny chest stilled beneath the blankets.

Pitch drew a deep breath in her stead, a shaken gasp he'd not expected. He pulled his hand away and stood, startling the Sandman, who'd been wiping little fingers beneath the rims of his own tawny, tearful eyes. The little man floated up after him, and Pitch did snarl now, unable to stand the brazen look of _concern_ writ upon Sandy's face. 

Sandy bounced back upon the air, looking stunned by the sudden hostility after the long hours of peace, even held out his open palms as though to ask the matter. Pitch shook his head tersely, mind unable to even conjure up a suitably violent retaliation for such audacity. (Strangulation held a certain, expedient appeal, but Pitch doubted he could find the Sandman's neck to manage it.)

And if the gasp hadn't been enough indignity, Pitch could feel the threat of his own tears burning behind his eyes. His mind jeered at him that he should have known better and simply _left_ , or at least done away with the Sandman when he'd arrived. But there was no recourse for it now, and damn it all, Sandy was moving toward him again, all lightly parted lips and upward tilting brows.

Pitch shrunk back, literally diminishing, until he no longer stood within the room, but rather in that void of space beneath the child's deathbed. The Sandman seemed to be of half a mind to try and follow, appearing suddenly knelt upon the floor and peering under the mattress. Pitch glared back, putting all the feral malice he could muster into the pyrite glow of his own eyes, a trick that worked to very good effect on the children of the world. Sandy just frowned at him, a look tinged with, of all things,  _disapproval_. 

Deciding he'd had quite enough of _all_ of this, Pitch vanished down into the solitude and solace of the dark. 

 


End file.
